Cindy Rozeboom wanted to start the second year of Art of the Danforth with a splash. Mission accomplished: At 1 p.m. Sunday afternoon, a few dozen game participants crowded a half-block stretch of Ladysmith Ave. south of Danforth Ave. armed with sponges, brightly-coloured paint, and a mind to create mayhem.

“I’m so proud to live in this neighbourhood!” Rozeboom, a member of the festival’s planning committee, announced over a megaphone, as the mostly white-clad crowd — some old, some young, a good number pint-sized toddlers — listened attentively, sponges in hand.

The bell would start in a minute and the inaugural Art of the Danforth Paintfight would begin, Rozeboom said. But first, some ground rules. Try to avoid people’s faces, she asked, as volunteers stirred troughs of primary-coloured paint — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple — and please, if you can, try not to douse the dozens of cameras on hand to capture the carnage.

When the bell rang six minutes later — organizers had planned for 10, but enough was enough — drenched paintfighters retreated to the sidelines, happily splattered.

None more so, maybe, than Michelle Beaton, an Art of the Danforth volunteer and professional event planner who conceived the Paintfight earlier this year.

“My craziness,” she said proudly, her face splattered blue and orange, as fighters rinsed paint from their hair and faces. Beaton came to the first Art of the Danforth the year before and was “blown away,” she said, and asked what she could do this year. Not long after, Paintfight was born.

“It’s very simple: It brings people out, it’s a lot of fun, and people walk away a living canvas,” she said.

For Rozeboom, bringing the idea to reality was a bit of a challenge — when asked if the permit process for closing off a section of street to coat city property in paint was arduous, she just laughed. “Oh, yeah. I think we were drinking wine when we first talked about it. ‘This is crazy,’ we thought. But we wanted to kick off with something big.”

Brothers Michael and David Wielgomas travelled from the west end for the fight. “When something fun like this happens, you gotta do it,” David said.

When the six minutes was up, the brothers’ white T-shirts emerged a sodden, muddy mix of purplish green and blue. “You got more green than I did,” observed Michael, who called the experience “a spiritual awakening, a dizzying array of colours. I want to do this every week.”

If he could somehow make it happen, he’d likely have company. “I felt like I was 5 years old,” said Lindsay Walker, 34. “It was pure, wonderful, play. We forget that this is what life should be about.”

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